Countdown(s)

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Seven days till Ironman Switzerland now, in fact all being well this time next week it’ll all be over. It’s also 16 days until I finish my job. And in 11 weeks time I’ll be on the Gold Coast.

Firstly I’m done with the whining now, it’s 7 days to go, there’s nothing more I can do. I still feel tired and my joints have stiffened up, but I’m putting this down to the typical taper effect. I checked my training diary from last year and sure enough I was seeing similar symptoms one week out. I was also doing less training than I planned too so not feeling my best I was happy to cut things back a little (OK, a lot). I’m not ashamed to say that today become a rest day, the weather was horrible and my motivation was low. I am ashamed to say I watched the Hollyoaks omnibus for the first time in a long time. I will be doing light training for the next 4 days before and after work, then Friday I’m travelling.

Am I suddenly confident? Well not really, but on the other hand I’m withdrawing the cash to pay for a Hawaii slot should I manage it. The worst that happens is I lose a bit of money on the exchange between the pound and the Swiss franc. The best that happens is I lose a lot of money paying for a slot and the accompanying trip involved. Either way more events should start accepting credit card, it’s bizarre to expect cash these days.

The reality is the exchange rate is a small price to pay besides the cost of the training, travel and equipment involved to get to this race. So monetary commitments aside I’d say I’m now appropriately nervous. This isn’t going to be an easy task by any means and I can’t say whether on the day I can execute the race I need. However assuming I don’t run foul of objective difficulties I should be able to do the swim in an hour and the aim for the bike is 5 hours which is within my reach. The real challenge is putting together the run I want after this. I’m looking to go below 3:10, my last 2 runs have been slower than I hoped, this time I want to hit closer to my marathon pace. A quick check tells me a 3 hour marathon is around 4:15 min/km and a 3:10 is about 4:30 min/km, I will be monitoring my pace a bit more closely this time round. All together and throwing in some hopefully reasonably rapid transitions and I have a little room for manoeuvring on my goal of going sub-9:30.

Back to my countdowns and my Oz plans are firming up a little as I’ve entered both the Noosa Tri and Ironman Oz. The rest of my race plans there now depend on that Hawaii slot. Looking further ahead I’m considering returning to the UK in the summer next year to race a few races in Europe, probably Roth and Ironman UK. I’m not sure how far in advance I’ll have to commit to that plan, but with most European races I won’t have too long to wait. Ideally I’ll return to the Oz summer after that to get in the World Long course event in Perth next year, but I may have to actually do some work for these plans to go ahead! Shocking.

I know I’ve repeated myself a little with this post, put it down to race nerves, there’s not much else on my mind.

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